In the last couple of years, I've really developed a taste, almost a need, for sparkling water. It was common in Europe years ago to see the locals drink the stuff with their meals, but I never thought that I would do the same. Yet now nothing else seems quite so refreshing, especially in the depths of summer, as an ice-cold bottle of European sparkling water. It's wonderful as a palate-cleanser, as an energy booster, as an all-around gulper when the mercury has roared past 100 enroute to hell. I favor the German water Gerolsteiner, but frequently order the Italian Pelligrino in a restarant, due to its wider availability.

Don't know how many of you have found that tonic for yourselves, but if you haven't, I sure heartily recommend it.

I just checked the label on Gerolsteiner and it has 30 mg sodium per 240 ml (8 fl oz). Debra says it tastes salty to her, so she doesn't care for it; but she doesn't sweat like a flogged mule, like I do. It's probably the sodium that my bod is saying it needs in this stuff. I'm drinking about a liter a day, and buying it by the 12 liter case at $0.99/liter btl.

I have loved thirst-quenching sparkling water since childhood. Today I get my sparkling water from the tap. I bought me a seltzer bottle, keep a supply of CO2 cartridges on hand, and make it up each day from filtered water.

I am in fact sipping a sparkling water right now, but this time it has a slice of lime and a large dash of Campari in it...talk about beating the heat.

When was the last time you guys drank a Chateau Budweiser AND a bottle of wine during the same meal? I can enjoy both the sparkler and the wine at dinner, without being booked into AA.

The last time I drank beer for refreshment while working outside, I was building a cedar rail fence along the front of a new property I had recently bought. With each 10-foot section, I had another beer. By the time I reached the far corner 130 feet away, that was the damnedest-lookin' fenceline you ever saw! One end was off-line from the other by a good six feet, with lots of zigs and zags along the way. The fellow who bought the tract got such a kick out of that fence, he kept it, and it's still there some 15 years later. I have to look at it whenever I drive by that way. That was in the mid-80's, and I learned from that to stick with water while working outside.

I don't care for sparkling water or mineral water so have to specify my preference in some restaurants. And woe is me if I forget to ask for "unsweetened tea" in North Carolina. I gag on the sweet tea! Someone said they can't believe I've lived here for seven years and still don't drink sweet tea. Well, it could be forty years and I would still want it unsweetened.

Biggest shock I ever got in my life is the way they serve tea in England. I always thought it was veddy, veddy Briddish to drink one's tea BLACK and DRY. Oh my, was I wrong. The stuff they consume is white with milk and thick with sugar, and I could spend the rest of my life there but would never warm to that custom. Yet, I like the fizzy water in Italy--if you try drinking the stuff that comes from the tap, you would also grow to like the fizzy water in Italy.